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Since we are not entitled to make desire the test by which to
decide on the nature and quality of the good, we may perhaps have
recourse to judgement.
We would apply the opposition of things- order, disorder;
symmetry, irregularity; health, illness; form, shapelessness;
real-being, decay: in a word continuity against dissolution. The
first in each pair, no one could doubt, belong to the concept of
good and therefore whatever tends to produce them must be ranged
on the good side.
Thus virtue and Intellectual-Principle and life and soul-
reasoning soul, at least- belong to the idea of good and so
therefore does all that a reasoned life aims at.
Why not halt, then- it will be asked- at Intellectual-Principle
and make that The Good? Soul and life are traces of
Intellectual-Principle; that principle is the Term of Soul which
on judgement sets itself towards Intellectual-Principle,
pronouncing right preferable to wrong and virtue in every form to
vice, and thus ranking by its choosing.
The soul aiming only at that Principle would need a further
lessoning; it must be taught that Intellectual-Principle is not
the ultimate, that not all things look to that while all do look
to the good. Not all that is outside of Intellectual-Principle
seeks to attain it; what has attained it does not halt there but
looks still towards good. Besides, Intellectual-Principle is
sought upon motives of reasoning, the good before all reason. And
in any striving towards life and continuity of existence and
activity, the object is aimed at not as Intellectual-Principle
but as good, as rising from good and leading to it: life itself
is desirable only in view of good.
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